


Can't Keep

by ohstardustgirl



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Child Soldier, Childhood, Gen, Partisans, Tumblr Prompts, adopted families, death of parents, jyn week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-03 16:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10971405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohstardustgirl/pseuds/ohstardustgirl
Summary: Six connected drabbles exploring Jyn's upbringing with Saw.For Jyn Erso Appreciation Week on tumblr.





	1. Faith

**Faith**

Jyn is only dimly aware of her surroundings. She knows she’s on a ship, travelling through space, and that the man to whom she’s pressed close in the cargo hold is her mother’s friend, Saw. His head is tilted back against the bulkhead, mouth open slightly so that his breath rasps in his throat as he sleeps. The light in the hold is dull and she feels like she’s holding her head underwater, sounds around her both muted and deafening.

Her young mind can’t quite focus on the present. It keeps skipping over the last day - over and over, sometimes in the right order, sometimes jumbled. Playing on the beach. The ships overhead. _I love you, Stardust_. The man in white. _Trust the Force_. Her mother falling to the ground. The hatch. 

_Trust the Force_ , Lyra had said.

Lyra had spoken so often of the Force, and Galen would smile fondly at her in the same way he did when Jyn told stories about Stormie’s adventures on the beach. 

Jyn had never quite understood it, the way her mother explained it. She tried following Lyra’s guidance of sitting quietly, focusing on only what she could hear and smell and feel. It never worked, her young mind too energetic to focus. 

She starts to tremble, and fresh tears burn her eyes. She feels achingly lonely, with Saw, on this strange ship in the middle of space. _Trust the Force_. Panic grips her chest as she tries to swallow down a sob before it can escape. How could she trust in something she had never understood? Her mother may as well have said nothing for all the comfort Jyn has in those words. 

But Lyra had explained the kyber crystal she wore - where it came from, what it was used for, how it worked with the Force in Jedi’s lightsabers - and so Jyn squeezes it tightly. She squeezes and concentrates as hard as she can, her knuckles turning white. The crystal feels warm in her hand and just as she is about to give up there’s the slightest shift in the air around her, as if there was a sudden draft. Saw jumps awake as if he has been prodded, and he wraps his arm around her and pulls her close to his comforting warmth. “It’s alright, child,” he mumbles as he falls quickly back into sleep, “You are not alone.”

Jyn instantly feels exhausted, and loses any shyness about resting her head against him. He is a stranger, but one her mother trusted, and that has to be enough. The kyber feels cool again as she loosens her grip. She thinks she feels her mother’s kiss on her temple as she slips into sleep.


	2. Luxury

**2\. Luxury**

For her first few nights with the Partisans, Jyn cries herself to sleep and wakes when the nightmares get too intense. Someone is always nearby - Saw, Revad, Nola - a gentle voice with kind words and a warm hand to rub comforting circles on her back.

Then, after a week, no one comes when she cries. In the darkness of a strange place, where she sleeps on a hard stone floor with only a thin blanket to cling to, it feels like she hasn’t woken from her nightmare at all. So she does what is second nature, and screams out for her Mama and Papa over and over again, as if doing so would make her wake up back in her own bed on Lahmu. 

But no one comes, and she shivers and cries until she exhausts herself, and falls asleep dreaming that Papa came to get her and brought her to sleep warm and safe between them. She wakes cold and sore from the ground.

The next day she is boneless and pale. Staying upright is hard, and her heart aches. Nola tries to talk to her cheerfully, babbling away as if Jyn isn’t sitting unresponsive and teary in the corner. She doesn’t want to move, she wants to fade away and she’s scared that if she closes her eyes again she will still wake up here.

She doesn’t speak for the whole day.

It’s Saw who comes to her when the rebels are turning in for the night. She doesn’t look at him, as if being angry at him somehow makes it better (and it does, if only a little; it’s a distraction from her grief). 

“I want nothing more, Jyn, than for you to feel safe here.” He sits in front of her, groaning as his knees bend. “Everything I do is to ensure that someday children like you will never lose their parents to the Empire. But someday isn’t now. I can’t bring them back.”

Jyn sniffles and looks at him, finally. The flickering light of the campfire casts shadows and makes his dark eyes twinkle. She twists her fingers in the fabric of her sleeve, wet from snot and tears.

“Relying on others for comfort is a luxury you can no longer afford. You’ve learned far too young that the ones we love can be lost at any time. I could coddle you, make things easy - but that isn’t the world we live in, child. It would only hurt you in the end.”

Her throat aches and her head hurts from crying and sleeplessness, and her voice is a choked whisper when she speaks. “I’m so scared.”

Something in Saw breaks then, and he reaches out to squeeze her arms in his large hands. It seems to take effort for him to hold her at a distance. She wishes he would wrap his arms around her, so that she could bury her face in his shirt and pretend he was her Papa. “Child, did anyone ever tell you how brave your mother was?”

“You mean she was never scared?” Jyn only knew bits and pieces of her mother’s past with Saw.

Saw chuckles. “She was often scared. But it never stopped her. She learned how to not let it control her.”

Jyn thinks about this for a long moment, relishing the affection in his voice when he speaks of Lyra. It makes her feel safe and warm. “How?”

“By believing in things more important than her own fear and comfort. Like fighting for the freedom of others, so that children like you can be free. These things are more important than toys and beds and blankets.”

She pulls back and wipes her nose on her sleeve. “Can you teach me to be like my mama?”

His smile is gentle and his eyes shine. “You are already more like her than you know. Whenever you are scared, think of her. She used to say that the Force would always watch over us as we slept, and that it would always provide.”

She sleeps a little better that night. The sounds in the camp still make her jump and the dark makes her uneasy, but she closes her eyes and thinks of her mother. _It never stopped her._ The cold ground and the dark and unfamiliar noises wouldn’t have stopped Lyra Erso from sleeping. Jyn vows that she won’t let fear stop her, either.


	3. Family

Her loneliness lessens in time, and she feels less like a lost child.

By the time she’s 14 she no longer wakes expecting to be in a soft bed on Coruscant or Lahmu. Her nightmares trouble her less frequently, and when they do they become a reminder that drives her forward.

Tonight, they’re gathered around a campfire in celebration. Everyone came home today, a rare thing. She sits at Saw’s side, as always - his shadow, some have called her. Wine is being shared freely - she sips at hers, enjoying the buzzing feeling in her spine brought on by the first half a glass before her head starts to spin and she sets it aside. 

She watches. The sun is setting in the distance, the sky is pale blue and lilac and the first stars have appeared. The rebels circle the campfire as the night air grows cool. Some are huddled close in serious conversation - replays of the attack today - while others laugh and bounce and squeal with drunken joy.

Jyn loves Saw, and would defend him with her life. She would die for nearly any of them, she thinks. They are good people, better than those who choose to ignore the rule of the Empire. But she still wonders sometimes about another life. 

A life where her mother tells her carefully about where babies come from and what girls and boys and girls and girls can do together, instead of Nola who babbles endlessly and speaks so loudly that Jyn is sure the whole camp heard the lesson.

A life where her father teaches her physics, instead of Jory teaching her how to strip a blaster.

A life where maybe her parents moved from Lahmu to somewhere bigger, where her first kiss could have been with a sweet local boy instead of a coward who ran away from his first fight the next day.

A life where she could use her sharp mind for something other than battle strategy.

A life where they had lived, and she never knew how it felt to fire a blaster.

Saw’s hand claps heavily on her shoulder, nearly knocking her from her seat beside him and shocking her from her daydreams.

“Jyn,” he says her name reverently and his voice is a little slurred by wine, “You made me proud today. You make me proud every day.”

She smiles at him, and feels herself pulled in two. She wants to be Saw’s daughter, and her heart swells every time he tells her he is proud. 

She also knows she would give it all up in heartbeat if it meant she could have her family back.


	4. Need

4\. Need

Jyn eyes the Imperial transport. They are outnumbered – two of them and six armed ‘troopers. The rest of the cadre is on other side of the village, pinned down by soldiers. They’ve done a good job of stopping the Imperials from pillaging the homes of the villagers, but they were too late to stop this one transport from getting loaded up.

There are _children_ being loaded on to that transport. Children torn from their families to become fodder for the Empire - they’ll be conditioned into undying loyalty and live their lives as Stormtroopers or pilots or technicians or servants. They will become nameless, more orphans.  
She can hear their screams and cries as they call out for their parents as the soldiers herd and manhandle them into place, grabbing them by collars as they try to run. She needs to stop this, but there’s too much of a risk of the children being caught in the crossfire if they use blasters from this range.

“Revad, get the children. I’ll distract the ‘troopers.”  
“Jyn, don’t - this is crazy!” Revad whispers beside her. He’s twice her age and twice her size and if he really wanted to stop her, he would, but there’s a reason she makes Saw proud and his soldiers don’t let the fact that she’s a 15 year old girl get in the way of their respect for her. “We should retreat, and go help the others!”

“And just let them be taken?” She sees him actually consider it a moment and it only fuels her conviction. “Help me or don’t - either way I’m doing this.”

With a feral cry Jyn runs at the troopers, batons extended. They turn, but are slow to raise their blasters - maybe it’s surprise, maybe it’s the fact that she’s small for her age and they don’t see her as a threat. 

Their mistake. 

The batons clash with their white armour, and when she can she makes contact with their joints, the sensitive bits that will make them buckle. Her lack of height is used to her advantage to duck their attempts at butting her with their rifles, and she uses their weight against them they run at her. Stormtrooper armour was not designed with hand-to-hand contact in mind. 

She takes down two of them before the other four consider her a serious threat, stepping away from where they are loading the children onto the transport. Jyn sees Revad approach slowly, hoping to sneak around and not draw their fire as he nears the children. Three of the soldiers advance on her, the fourth hangs back, head swinging between the children and his comrades.

One of the three gets a lucky strike on her, right between her shoulder blades as she ducks, but she takes him down with a jab between the armoured plates of his knee. Her breath catches with the pain in her back but she launches upwards, baton aligned along her forearm to catch under the jaw of another. 

When it’s done, and there’s one lone 'trooper trying to point his blaster at both Jyn and the children, she sees Revad step up behind the enemy, blaster raised at close range.

Jyn smiles as Revad drops the butt of his blaster heavily on the back of the 'troopers neck.

The children huddle together, clinging to each other as they cry and shiver. Together they herd the children towards one of the homes at the edge of the village, weapons raised and eyes alert to any dangers.

“You’re crazy,” grumbles Revad as he picks up a wailing toddler. “Six troopers without a blaster, what is wrong with you?”

Jyn shrugs. “It needed to be done. If we just let them go I never could have forgiven myself. ”

Jyn needed to stop more children from knowing what it means to lose everything to the Empire.


	5. Hope

**5\. Hope**

She hopes Saw will be alright. It wasn’t like him to tell her to stay behind. There seemed to be no danger he thought she couldn’t handle, until now. 

But if waiting in the bunker until daylight was what he needed of her, it was what she would do.

Jyn checks and rechecks her blaster, then resigns herself to a quiet night. Daylight wasn’t that far off, and she may as well take the opportunity to get some rest. She has slept in much worse places. She picks a corner and curls up into it. She dreams of her mother walking away from her.

Dawn breaks, and she waits. She paces and stretches, and nibbles on the rations from her pockets. The sun passes high overhead.

They’re coming back. They have to. 

She doesn’t know which is worse - that they’re not coming back because something awful has happened, or because they’ve chosen not to.

Saw wouldn’t do that. Why would he do that?

By nightfall she has made up a story in her head, one that explains everything. There are probably ‘troopers in the town, too much of an Imperial presence for them to risk crossing back to get her. 

On the second morning she makes up her mind to leave and go looking. They would still be able to find her easily enough, and she guesses maybe Saw is waiting for her to come to him if he can’t get to her. 

She makes her way through the market place and tries to catch the eye of the fruit seller who had passed intel to them. Jyn catches the moment the old woman spots her then quickly averts her gaze. She slips up to the stall anyway, takes her time pretending to look over the wares.

“Have you seen him?”

The old woman doesn’t look at Jyn when she answers. “No.”

She checks out the port and there are no familiar ships, and no more familiar faces around town.

 _It’s ok_ , Jyn tells herself. _It’s only been one day and two nights. If he’s left the planet it’s for good reason. He’ll come back, or find a way to tell her where to go._

She steals some food from the market and spends another night in the bunker. 

Three more days and nights pass. Jyn still clings to hope, a little more desperately. Something has happened, she thinks. She doesn’t entertain the possibility that she has been abandoned because it just doesn’t make sense. Saw is practically her father, and the Partisans are her family. 

They’re all she has.

She makes a contact at the port on the fourth day, a greasy old smuggler who tells her what she does and doesn’t want to hear. 

"Saw?” He shrugs. “Can’t say I’ve heard any news. Believe me, something was to happen to that crazy bastard every pirate in the galaxy would know. You’re a bit young to be signing up with that lot, aren’t ya?”

Jyn mumbles her thanks and stalks back to the market. No news is good news, but also maddeningly unhelpful.

She covers the city again and sees no one familiar. There is no network here beyond the old woman and some traders who know his name. By the end of the fourth day she feels pain claw in her chest; panic makes her want to sob as if she were eight years old again. She is tired, and alone, and there’s a voice in her head telling her that it’s _too late._

As the market is being packed up she confronts the old woman, anxiety buzzing in her blood.

"You did see him, didn’t you?” She asks, voice shaking with anger and fear, as the old woman sets a box of fruit at her feet. 

She looks at Jyn with such pity that she wants to break something, because she is not a thing to be pitied. “I saw him walk out into the desert with you, and then come back alone. _Look out for her_ , he said, _because I won’t be coming back_. And then he left.” She sighs, and reaches her hand out to squeeze Jyn’s arm. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you, but he didn’t leave me much of a choice.”

Jyn’s face burns and she can’t breathe. She bites hard on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from screaming at this old woman. You’re wrong, she thinks, Saw wouldn’t do that.

She turns without a word and heads back to the bunker. Her rage simmers inside her, embers of coal hot in her chest. She’ll wait. He’ll come back.

Hope dies with the sunset on the fifth day, and she breaks everything she can get her hands on in the bunker before she collapses in a heap and cries like a child. 


	6. Partisans

**6\. Partisans**

Jyn fixes a practiced scowl in place as she is led through the Partisan base on Jedha. Six years is a long time in a war, turnover of soldiers is high, and most of the faces are new and unrecognisable. But some shine out of the darkness; Jory’s eyes light up when he sees her but she looks away when his gaze darkens. None of them smile at her. The sounds of the camp, the smells, dig into her brain like tentacles and pull memories to the surface.

_Nights spent on hard ground, sleeping under a blanket of stars. Burying what was left of Nola in the desert with her favourite blaster. The adrenaline of sabotage and Saw’s large hand clapping heavily on to her shoulder, pride and affection shining in his eyes as she grinned up at him. The familiar noises of the camp at night lulling her to sleep in place of her childhood toys._

Two-Tubes pushes her to the wall and orders her to stay put before he disappears ahead into another room. She waits, and feels raw and exposed with their eyes on her. 

Cassian had killed one of them to save her. She didn’t know if she had saved or condemned him and the Guardians by taking them under the protection of her name. Maybe the Partisans would have left them behind in the city and just taken her. Cassian may have been her prison guard but he had shown nothing but kindness and trust, and the Guardians had protected them both. She wasn’t about to throw them to the dogs to save her skin. _Friends_ still tasted like bad memories.

“Little Jyn,” says Jory as he rises and steps towards her. “I never thought when I saw you again you would have the blood of one of ours on your hands.” He towers over her - always had - and she’s no more intimidated than when she was a child. She knows his weak spots, how his right knee would buckle with the right force. His left eye is gone, and the scars on his cheeks have turned what was once a friendly face into a twisted scowl.

She raises her chin. “You’re the ones that decided to start a fight with innocent children around. You deserve the consequences.”

"There are always innocent children. It’s a price to pay for the freedom of the galaxy.”

"That doesn’t sound like the Saw I knew,” she says. 

Jory steps in close and leans down so he’s in her face. “You’ve been gone a long time. You know nothing, little Jyn.”

She doesn’t give in to the argument he wants, and she won’t apologise for what Cassian did to save her life, either. All the memories that had warmed her when she first looked around now leave her cold. She understands now why the Rebels, with their ranks and uniforms and protocols, could no longer work with the Partisans.

A part of her – something she kept up secret from even herself until her weakest moments – had always hoped that someday she would be able to forgive Saw and come home again. The final fragile thread of that hope snaps. 

Galen is the last thing she has to cling to now, because every dream she has ever had for herself has involved either finding him or reconciling with Saw. Something shivers inside her, because without either of her families all she can see for herself is darkness.

She got Cassian in the door, alive. That would have to be enough for him, though she couldn’t say why she cared if he succeeded. It just didn’t seem fair for him to fail. Jyn just wants her father back, and she’ll fight the Alliance for him if she has to. Cassian will just have to be another face she hopes not to see in her dreams _(why does she think his eyes will be the hardest to forget?)_

Jory gives up on her, grumbling an insult under his breath. She leans against the wall, staring back defiantly at anyone who dares to cast a dirty look her way, until Two-Tubes returns. He undoes her cuffs and pushes her forward.

Her resolve and her heart breaks as she sees Saw.

In six years, he’s aged twenty, and the hard shell of her anger fractures in pity before she can steel herself. _He left you,_ she reminds herself before she forgets the pain. _He left you, and took another family away from you._ She sets her jaw tight and high, looks down her nose, and closes off her heart. 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr: @ohstardustgirl
> 
> Thanks for reading x


End file.
